This article is a very succinct and extremely well-stated argument by Onkar Ghate. And it would surprise no one who chimes in here that it is utterly consistent with my world-view. As a disclaimer, I have met Onkar. He is a very bright fellow, polite, and very mannered.. He is precise in his language and is delicately measured in his unwavering advocacy for individual rights..

The simple answer to his rhetorical question at the end of the article is simple: Yes!

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Werd.

..

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“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government” – Thomas Jefferson

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The way that humans live (survive) is by acting on their rational judgment, as opposed to animals or plants that survive by evolutionary instinct and/or biochemical reactions which mutate over time via natural selection. Of course, humans also evolve and mutate but their fundamental tool of survival is their rational mind. And when we humans are precluded or stopped by force from exercising our rational judgments our lives are ratably lessened, and in the worst case resulting in death. Choosing to ignore this objective, metaphysical, fact of the need to act rationally and use reason to survive and live will just as directly limit an individual’s independence; his freedom to act on his own judgment, which is the definition of liberty. Remember that man has no innate instincts to guide his actions. If a man chooses to ignore reason and rational action he doesn’t need an instinct to tell him that pain, suffering, and possibly even death will eventually find him – it will find him whether he likes it or not because that is the nature of reality.

The axiom here is that as and to the degree force is applied, or irrational actions are taken, an individual’s freedom to act, his liberty, and his life (or the quality thereof), is reduced. Conversely, the more an individual uses reason and rationality, and the less the extent to which his reason and the use of his own judgement are hampered or restricted (by force or his own irrational choices), the greater his quality and quantity of life will be.

As individuals we have free will, and as such we can (and do) choose to use reason, or not. We can choose to act on our best judgments, or not. Moreover, we are not infallible – we all too often operate on less than perfect information. And this feature of humanity, free will, is what fundamentally gives rise to the concept and study of morality; chosen values. And values are those things we act to gain and to keep that make life possible. Again, these are facts of reality and not revelations, edicts from government, or decrees from a dictator or monarch.

Humans therefore need a principle that recognizes these metaphysical facts regarding the initiation of physical force and an individual’s judgments. A principle that integrates these concepts, recognizing that humans need to act on their own judgments, and that force serves to prevent such action. Such is the principle of individual rights. And the fundamental purpose of properly recognizing individual rights is so that people can live together peacefully in a social context to maximize their individual life while recognizing the rights of others to do the same.

Ayn Rand stated:

“Rights are a moral concept that provides for a logical transition guiding an individual’s actions to the principles guiding his relations with others. It is the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context; the link between a moral code of a man, and the legal code of a society – between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.”

So it is that individual (natural) rights are both moral and political, and are a reflection of the fundamental fact that man needs to be free; liberty is his natural state if life is his goal. And if life is his purpose, then he must be free to pursue those values that allow and sustain it. If you cannot get your moral rights from the facts of reality, then they are no more “natural” than printing money can be said to create wealth. And this is no small concept! Point being what is good or bad only has meaning in the context of a living being – nothing is good or evil if you no longer exist. “Good” and “Values” have no meaning except in the context of a living human person, animal, or plant.

Natural rights, properly understood, are in fact individual rights, and individual rights are, in fact, natural rights. The subordination of the government to the individual, implicitly found in the Declaration of Independence, is premised on those metaphysical facts of reality which place the interests of the individual ABOVE the interests of any government, i.e. the subordination of government (“society”) to the individual. And such is the antithesis of all collectivist ideologies that have ever existed, as well as the inane notion of collectivized rights. Natural rights clearly do not come from a supernatural source, they are a direct reflection of the metaphysical facts regarding what it actually means to live, and what is required to live, as a human being (as opposed to a slave, a serf, a delusional dupe, a prisoner, or a corpse). Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness then, properly understood, are premised upon natural (individual) rights, and not some decree, supernatural revelation, or social convention.

This was what the founders lacked; the integrated philosophical premise to the political system they unleased so marvelously upon the world.. Clearly they observed and recognized some of those metaphysical facts required for life, e.g. freedom. But an integrated philosophical premise was missing, and allowed for subjective interpretations of the grand political system they invented. After all, natural rights as espoused back then implied an intrinsic feature that simply wasn’t there. No matter how many corpses were analyzed, no rights could be found amongst the heart, liver, stomach and lungs! It wasn’t until the 20th century and a brilliant philosopher named Ayn Rand that this defendable base and definition of individual rights was discovered – and she discovered it through the recognition of the real world, life sustaining, needs of man. It is her singular and profound contribution to humanity. It is our responsibility to grasp it, understand it, and apply it.

So it is, to a degree, something of a setup here that I asked where natural rights come from. Whether you believe in the supernatural or not, you cannot defend our founders vision, you cannot have a coherent theory of natural rights, you cannot defend capitalism (and its premise of individual rights and private property) from the notion of supernatural sources for natural rights. Nor can you defend them by asserting them to be intrinsic features of man unconnected to any rational base. Both of these, as I mentioned at the outset of Part I, “opens the door wide for any would-be looter of either the mind, or your pocketbook.” If there is any hope for mankind, it is from a rational basis grounded in reality for the natural, individual, rights of man that will finally set us free from the subjectivists of every stripe. So, the answer to the question is simply that natural rights come from the recognition of those fundamental requirements of a man to live, and specifically it is his own life which is the standard of value.

h/t to Craig Biddle for his great book Loving Life, and his essays, and lectures.

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The socialists speak of freedom and collective bargaining or living wage or healthcare rights as if the terms can be perfectly interchangeable. But their rights have nothing in common with the term that Jefferson spoke of in the Declaration of Independence. I forget the name of the writer, but rights in a society based on liberty have one common thread; the exercise of rights does not obligate others.

The right to free speech and thought does not obligate others to listen or agree. The right to religious faith does obligate others to believe. The right to private property does not obligate others to groom or protect. The right to freely associate does not obligate others to join or be your friend. The right to commerce does not obligate others to exchange. The right to pursue knowledge does obligate others to teach you. The right to be left alone does not force you to participate in the agenda of others. Freedom is the absence of force.

Unfortunately, the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution does little in defining true rights. The first Ten Amendments were not meant as a defining dictionary to rights. The intent was to formally restrict government from over running the natural rights of man.

Rights as used by the socialists have nothing to do with freedom. The right to collective bargaining means using the force of government to negotiate. The right to healthcare means forcing others to treat and finance. The right to a living wage means forcing others to pay. The right to education means forcing others to provide the means for teaching.

No right to force exists in a free society.

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Much of the story is happening now. According to the author, events may spin the country apart later this summer. As a weekly series, partial chapters will be released on Sunday evenings. With the protests by government union thugs and the passage of currency legislation in Utah this week, portions of two chapters are showcased later tonight.

All copyrights remain with the author

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It appears two reasons exist for an individual to shy away from voting if identification is required. They are either not a citizen or running from the law. Are Sjoberg and Nelson proposing that aliens and criminals have the right to vote?

Long before the idea of same day registration, first time voters would have to file six weeks in advance to allow proper time for election officials to verify citizenship and residency. Shortening the time period means less time for accurate verification and the door for fraud widens.

The real problem in the voting process is that we technically allow thieves to vote for more looting. Stealing defined as taking another’s property through force or fraud. Whether one receives a government issued check in the form of a direct subsidy, payroll, pension, or a form of welfare, then the individual has in effect taken another’s money through government enforced confiscation.

As Benjamin Franklin noted, “when the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” The debate over the County nursing home exemplifies Franklin’s idea. Proponents favoring more tax dollars for the facility argue on the basis of a non-binding vote of county residents several years ago. Letter writers to the paper voicing support for continued taxpayer financing for the nursing home fall into two categories: government workers that want to protect their salaries and pensions or people that have a relative under the care of the county.

If we are ever to restore our liberties, then maybe it is time to put forth the idea that individuals receiving a government check other than a tax refund or Social Security ( both are means of returning stolen property) to be disqualified from voting.

Can you imagine the letters to the editor if such an idea came to fruition?

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This week in the Missouri state Capitol, a large rally was held in favor of defending state sovereignty. Rep. Tim Jones and Senator Jane Cunningham spoke about their respective bills filed to protect Missourians’ right to choose their own healthcare and not be forced into the federal government’s plan under threat of fines or imprisonment. This centralization of more and more power in Washington D.C. is fostering a citizens’ movement to understand and defend personal liberty and the federalist principle of state sovereignty – a governing principle captured eloquently in the 10th amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Joplin Independent

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Transcript of video 1 below, h/t to capmag..

But to do this right, we need to understand what it means. So I want to think back for a moment to what happened over 200 years ago, at the time of the original Boston Tea Party.

The Founders of this nation brought forth a radical idea. It was truly radical, practiced nowhere before this time.

This idea was the Rights of Man. The Founders saw each of us as endowed with certain inalienable rights, rights that may not be separated from our nature as autonomous beings.

These inalienable rights are:

· The Right to Life–the right to live your own life, to choose your own goals, and to preserve your own independent existence.

· The Right to Liberty, which is the right to act to achieve your goals, without coercion by other men.

· The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness, to act to achieve your own success, your own prosperity, and your own happiness, for your own sake.

· And the Right to Property—the right to gain, keep, and enjoy, the material products of your efforts.

Unless I’m mistaken I don’t see anything here about a right to happiness. I see a right to the pursuit of happiness: the right to take the actions needed to attain one’s own happiness. Nor do I see any rights to things at all—no rights to food, clothing, healthcare or diapers. There is only a right to act to achieve those things. This is called freedom.

These rights to act—the rights to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness—are founded on a certain view of man. Each of us is an individual, autonomous, moral being, with the right to choose his own values and capable of directing his own life.

Look at the person next to you, and look in the mirror—do you see the individual sovereign human being, existing for his own sake, with the right to live, to love, and to act?

This idea—the Founders’ idea of the individual Rights of Man—led to a radical view of government. Government was not to be inherited by the force of an entrenched aristocracy as in Europe, imposed by the divine right of kings through generations of oppression, or enforced by the force of a club.

Government in America was to be designed and instituted by thinking men, for a single purpose: to protect and defend the Rights of Man.

This is what the American Declaration of Independence says: “To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” Thinking men, armed with the idea of rights, created a government limited to the protection of individual rights.

For centuries in Europe, the relationship between the people and the government had been that of serf to master: everyone was a servant of the ruling elite. In America, this was turned upside down: government became the servant of the individual. The very reason for a government–and its purpose–is to secure our inalienable, individual rights.

The results in America speak for themselves: the greatest most prosperous nation the world has ever seen. I here quote the writer Ayn Rand (and if you want to understand what is happening today, read her novel Atlas Shrugged). Ayn Rand, speaking to the graduating class at West Point, said that the United States was the first and only moral nation in the history of man, the first nation founded on a moral principle, the Rights of Man, and with a moral purpose, to secure these rights for all men.

This principle of rights is so strong that over years the Americans were able to correct the original shortcomings that the Founders’ could not overcome. Slavery and the denial of women’s suffrage both fell when the principle of rights was properly applied to all men. To correct the original errors did not require the Americans to overthrow the principle, but rather to strengthen and to deepen it, to apply it to everyone, and to renew their commitment to it.

And that is what we must do today.

Because something very bad has happened in America over the last century. A cancer has implanted itself in the land of the free. A cancer has grown in our government and in our society. The cancer is the idea that government is no longer to be the defender of our rights, but rather the grantor of wishes.

Over the past century the idea took hold that government’s purpose was not to secure our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but rather to satisfy our needs, whims and wants. That idea has been implanted in our schools, our media, and our government.

Do you wish for a better house? There’s a government housing agency to give it to you, with taxes extorted from those who buy their own house. Do you wish for health care? There is a government agency who will extort it from others and give it to you. Do you need food? There is a welfare agency to grab the wealth needed to give you food stamps.

And who will provide these handouts? The government, many people say, the all-powerful being that looms over us and grants our wishes. But who is to provide the goods that government hands out? Every person who works and produces, and whose property, gained by the sweat of his efforts, is taken from him by force.

The government has, once again, become a ruling aristocracy, set up as our masters, disposing of our lives.

This cancer has now grown to the point where this ruling elite controls a budget of over four thousand billion dollars a year—more money than can be conceived by the human mind. The government had to grow this big—and it will continue to grow until it destroys this nation—because it is acting according to the idea that it is morally right to take the wealth from those who produce it, and to give it to those who want it.

At the root of this idea is a view of man that is totally at odds with the vision of the Founders: the modern vision of man as a whining dependent, who begs for the needs of life from an all-powerful governing aristocracy. This ruling elite claims the moral right to distribute the wealth of those who earn it to those who wish for it.

If we are going to challenge this monstrosity, if we are going to expunge this cancer, then this is what we must reject. We need to regain the vision of ourselves held by the American Founders. We need to stand up, and assert ourselves as autonomous moral beings, with the right to our own life, liberty and the pursuit of our own happiness. We need to reject the claim that we are weak and dependent beggars, and to assert our own competence to run our own lives.

It is going to take as great a commitment to destroy this cancer as it took to build it. We’re going to have to be strong, we’re going to have to be independent in our thinking, and we are going to have to reject handouts when they are offered to us. And we’re going to have to speak out.

At its heart, the economic and political crisis is a deeper problem—a moral problem. The cause of the crisis today is the worship of need, and the view of man as too stupid to act for his own sake, and worthy of being milked of all his values, to provide for others. This is what we must reject.

Do you think that this is a conspiracy to seize your wealth? It is far worse than that. As Ayn Rand wrote, “It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.”

This is an attempt to seize your life, to destroy your sense of self as an independent human being, and to replace it with a being with no self-esteem and no capacity for individual action—a being doomed to beg for sustenance from an all-powerful ruling elite.

This ruling elite, looking down on us right now, cannot understand gatherings such as these, in which free people gather to defend liberty. They think that this must be orchestrated by a vast conspiracy, because they cannot understand how autonomous human beings might gather by their own choice, to affirm their commitment to liberty.

Our so-called leaders think this because they don’t see autonomous moral beings at all. They see only serfs, sniveling and whining, begging their masters for the scraps needed to survive, acting as a collective mob rather than as thinking individuals.

Look at yourselves again. Do you see in your face, and in the face of the person next to you, the slave of a group, with no moral status, no rights and no liberties, who is bound from birth to serve? Or do you see an autonomous being with the right to live for his own sake?

Will you knuckle under and become a helpless dependent? Or will you stand tall, and defend your right to your own life, your own liberty, your pursuit of your own individual happiness, and your own property?

It is time to stand up, to say no to the creed of dependence, to assert ourselves, to assert our own moral status, to defend our right to our own lives and property, and to make our voices heard.

Thank you very much.

John David Lewis

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The question that must be asked is why anyone could be so opposed to the point of hysteria against the ideas of one keeping the fruits of their labor and defending the principles of liberty. What is it about our founding principles of limited government and the right to private property that Representative Jan Schakowski finds so despicable?

The answer should be obvious. Without the ability to forcibly take the wealth of others through the political process, many would be relegated to a lifestyle reflective of their talents, intellect and motivation. For a majority such a change would mean living with less.

Only a thief would protest loudly over another’s right to private property. The country is now clearly divided between takers and the taken; or the thieves and the mark; or the immoral and the moral. How can such a gulf in philosophy ever be bridged?

But another schism was revealed that nearly makes the gap in our national consciences almost impossible to close. The reliance of many to have their children educated by government institutions has resulted in a sizeable ignorant class, who has little understanding of history or cannot reason.

Admittedly, I have dismissed most news shows as providing any useful information or insight and spend little more than a glancing second watching them while flipping through the channels.

On Wednesday night I came across for a few brief minutes a discussion concerning the day’s rallies on Shawn Hannity. Commenting on remarks by Texas governor Rick Perry pertaining to the idea of secession, Geraldo Rivera launched an ignorant tirade found all too common in the American intellect.

Rivera stated that such an idea crossed the line and that one would have to be a lunatic to argue in favor of secession. He made some additional babblings about the Civil War and slavery. It appears the seeker of Al Capone’s vault and others with his viewpoint have conveniently dismissed American and world history.

The ideas contained in the Declaration of Independence are based on the God given right of the people to sever a relationship with a government that is viewed to be oppressive. To say the idea of secession is one born from a lunatic and extremism calls into question the founding of our nation, which was nothing more than the colonists seceding from Great Britain.

In recent times, the United States government has even condoned and supported secessionist actions taking place elsewhere in the world. Where was the outrage from our politicians and news organizations when one by one Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania and the Baltic states severed their relationship with the Soviet bloc? In Yugoslavia, the United States military supported the efforts of several regions within that country to break away. Yet these acts of secession were hailed by our political establishment and national press as heroic.

As I have noted before, we sever formal relationships throughout our lifetime; whether it be a marriage, employment, business partnership, or membership in an organization. In fact, Mr. Rivera has seceded from three marriages and has tied the knot four times. Only a lunatic would be married four times. Additionally, he has been employed by four different networks over the past fifteen years.

I doubt those screaming extremism would support the idea where marriages or employment could not be voluntarily absolved. Freedom cannot exist when the ability to “walk out the door” is obstructed. Forcibly holding someone in a relationship where the fruits of their labor are involuntarily surrendered is the very definition of slavery; a description of socialism and the course that many in our country find attractive.

Those so repulsed by the Tea Parties have taken on the face of a slave owner.

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….. apoplectic

What do the lunatic lefties become when a few citizens voice their opposition to an oppressive federal government? These same lefties have no problem when urine bombs are launched at convention goers during the Republican convention, but go bonkers when conservatives hold peaceful rallies across the country. Just goes to show the absolute hypocrisy of the left.

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With your heart pumping, you reach down beside your bed and pick up your shotgun. You rack a shell into the chamber, then inch toward the door and open it. In the darkness, you make out two shadows.

One holds something that looks like a crowbar. When the intruder brandishes it as if to strike, you raise the shotgun and fire. The blast knocks both thugs to the floor. One writhes and screams while the second man crawls to the front door and lurches outside. As you pick up the telephone to call police, you know you’re in trouble.

In your country, most guns were outlawed years before, and the few that are privately owned are so stringently regulated as to make them useless.

Yours was never registered. Police arrive and inform you that the second burglar has died. They arrest you for First Degree Murder and Illegal Possession of a Firearm. When you talk to your attorney, he tells you not to worry: authorities will probably plea the case down to manslaughter.

“What kind of sentence will I get?” you ask.

“Only ten-to-twelve years,” he replies, as if that’s nothing. “Behave yourself, and you’ll be out in seven.”

The next day, the shooting is the lead story in the local newspaper.

Somehow, you’re portrayed as an eccentric vigilante while the two men you shot are represented as choirboys. Their friends and relatives can’t find an unkind word to say about them. Buried deep down in the article, authorities acknowledge that both “victims” have been arrested numerous times. But the next day’s headline says it all: “Lovable Rogue Son Didn’t Deserve to Die.” The thieves have been transformed from career criminals into Robin Hood-type pranksters. As the days wear on, the story takes wings. The national media picks it up, then the international media. The surviving burglar has become a folk hero.

Your attorney says the thief is preparing to sue you, and he’ll probably win. The media publishes reports that your home has been burglarized several times in the past and that you’ve been critical of local police for their lack of effort in apprehending the suspects. After the last break-in, you told your neighbor that you would be prepared next time.

The District Attorney uses this to allege that you were lying in wait for the burglars.

A few months later, you go to trial. The charges haven’t been reduced, as your lawyer had so confidently predicted. When you take the stand, your anger at the injustice of it all works against you.
Prosecutors paint a picture of you as a mean, vengeful man. It doesn’t take long for the jury to convict you of all charges.

The judge sentences you to life in prison.

This case really happened.

On August 22, 1999, Tony Martin of Emneth, Norfolk, England, killed one burglar and wounded a second. In April, 2000, he was convicted and is now serving a life term.

How did it become a crime to defend one’s own life in the once great British Empire?

It started with the Pistols Act of 1903. This seemingly reasonable law forbade selling pistols to minors or felons and established that handgun sales were to be made only to those who had a license. The Firearms Act of 1920 expanded licensing to include not only handguns but all firearms except shotguns.

Later laws passed in 1953 and 1967 outlawed the carrying of any weapon by private citizens and mandated the registration of all shotguns.

Momentum for total handgun confiscation began in earnest after the Hungerford mass shooting in 1987. Michael Ryan, a mentally disturbed Man with a Kalashnikov rifle, walked down the streets shooting everyone he saw. When the smoke cleared, 17 people were dead.

The British public, already de-sensitized by eighty years of “gun control”, demanded even tougher restrictions. (The seizure of all privately owned handguns was the objective even though Ryan used a rifle.)

Nine years later, at Dunblane, Scotland , Thomas Hamilton used a semi-automatic weapon to murder 16 children and a teacher at a public school.

For many years, the media had portrayed all gun owners as mentally unstable, or worse, criminals. Now the press had a real kook with which to beat up law-abiding gun owners. Day after day, week after week, the media gave up all pretense of objectivity and demanded a total ban on all handguns. The Dunblane Inquiry, a few months later, sealed the fate of the few sidearms still owned by private citizens..

During the years in which the British government incrementally took away most gun rights, the notion that a citizen had the right to armed self-defense came to be seen as vigilantism. Authorities refused to grant gun licenses to people who were threatened, claiming that self-defense was no longer considered a reason to own a gun. Citizens who shot burglars or robbers or rapists were charged while the real criminals were released.

Indeed, after the Martin shooting, a police spokesman was quoted as saying, “We cannot have people take the law into their own hands.”

All of Martin’s neighbors had been robbed numerous times, and several elderly people were severely injured in beatings by young thugs who had no fear of the consequences. Martin himself, a collector of antiques, had seen most of his collection trashed or stolen by burglars.

When the Dunblane Inquiry ended, citizens who owned handguns were given three months to turn them over to local authorities. Being good British subjects, most people obeyed the law. The few who didn’t were visited by police and threatened with ten-year prison sentences if they didn’t comply. Police later bragged that they’d taken nearly 200,000 handguns from private citizens.

How did the authorities know who had handguns? The guns had been registered and licensed. Kinda like cars.

Sound familiar?

WAKE UP AMERICA, THIS IS WHY OUR FOUNDING FATHERS PUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT IN OUR CONSTITUTION.

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Thomas Paine may be the most maligned, and certainly the most under-rated, of all the men who impacted and played a role in the American Revolution. If alive today he would likely be accepted at best as a pseudo intellectual; rejected equally by conservatives for not passing the mystic litmus test, and by the left for his views on limited government and, interestingly, individual liberty.

Yet, in the words of Thomas Edison:

“We never had a sounder intelligence in this Republic. He was the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible. Where Washington performed Paine devised and wrote. The deeds of one in the weld were matched by the deeds of the other with his pen. Washington himself appreciated Paine at his true worth. Franklin knew him for a great patriot and clear thinker. He was a friend and confidant of Jefferson, and the two must often have debated the academic and practical phases of liberty.

I consider Paine our greatest political thinker.”

In the words of Abraham Lincoln:

“I never tire of reading Paine.”

In the words of Thomas Jefferson:

“You ask my opinion of Lord Bolingbroke and Thomas Paine. They were alike in making bitter enemies of the priests and Pharisees of their day. Both were honest men; both advocates for human liberty.” (Letter to Francis Eppes)

Paine, along with a very few others, was one of the intellectuals behind The Revolution. Intellectuals are not just found on college campuses; institutions where one is ineligible to be a serious thinker without a doctor of philosophy degree. In fact, there are intellectuals of tremendous import and impact with little or no formal education beyond high school. Considering the humble, by modern standards, opportunities for formal education in the 1700′s, what marked the great thinkers of the revolutionary period, in my view, was not the institution from which they obtained a degree, but rather their insatiable appetite for knowledge and their willingness to obtain it and apply it.

When it comes to the minds who drove this nation to freedom, the key feature they all shared was self-education beyond any formal schooling, and discourse. Reading, writing, thinking, discussing, and then engaging in the application of their mind’s work those universal truths so discovered, particularly the nature of man. In short, what it is that a free man really needs and what constraints must not be placed upon him in order to live free in the present and to secure such for generations to come. To suggest this mind work was something other than intellectual is beyond ignorance.

Where Washington was the shiny external of an Indy race car it was, from an intellectual perspective, men such as T. Jefferson, T. Paine, B. Franklin, P. Henry, and S. Adams (several others I could mention here, including G. Mason, E. Gerry, and R. H. Lee), that were more the activist thinkers or, in fact, varied measures of action and intellectual thought. These men knew deeply of the ancient Greeks, the follies and fortunes of the Romans, were clearly intimate with Christian theology and its irrationality, read and were often fluent in Latin (and other languages), studied and were fascinated with the science of their day (they lived within a 100 year distance from Rene Descartes’ seminal treatise, from which the French phrase “Je pense, donc je suis” comes) , having lived within one genration’s memory of the outrageous treatment of Galileo by the Catholic Church – a mere 144 years prior to Jefferson penning the Declaration of Independence. These guys were, thinkers and social application engineers. Their life’s work was to create not just a working model of freedom, but a nation premised upon the individual liberty of the person from any government.

These men also clearly understood the liberal traditions that had sprung up and taken root in their homeland (England) – at the time, the freest monarchy on earth. Three men in particular stand out in my mind: Jefferson, Paine, and Henry. These three, aided and abetted by the likes of Sam Adams and his Sons of Liberty in Massachusetts, were part gasoline, part piston, in the Indy car of ideas that ran the 500 mile race to revolution and independence.

Make no mistake about it, were it not for Thomas Paine there most likely would not have been a successful Revolution. At a moment in history where starving minds desperately needed to be fed, Paine offered up a banquet in Common Sense (published anonymously on January 10, 1776). But often you will see in history books, or in online encyclopedias, that, for instance, Thomas Paine is not considered one of the top ten Founders; why? Why would such a brilliant, principally self-educated intellectual, who saw our individual freedom and liberty as primary, be shunned? The man who, more than any other, communicated the distilled abstrations of Aristotle, Locke, Descartes, Galileo, and others in a way the common man could understand and provided the much needed spirit for independence when it was most needed. Clearly, his authorship of Rights of Man, Age of Reason, Common Sense, and The American Crisis reserve to him the status of an intellectual standing shoulder to shoulder with the best and brightest of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Below is a passage written by Mr. Paine while imprisoned in Luxembourg which stands out as heresy to the religious fundamentalists and is, in my humble view, part and parcel of the ostracizing of him by contemporary historians.

If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me; but if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed; moral Justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty, even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose Justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself; it is then no longer Justice, it is indiscriminate revenge.

This single reflection will show, that the doctrine of redemption is founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again with the system of second redemption, obtained through the means of money given to the Church for pardons, the probability is that the same persons fabricated both the one and the other of those theories; and that, in truth there is no such thing as redemption, that it is fabulous, and that man stands in the same relative condition with his Maker as he ever did stand since man existed, and that it is his greatest consolation to think so.

I believe it was because of those words (and thoughts) Thomas Paine was shunned, ridiculed, and swept under into the rough… He was challenging morality by conscensus, he was challenging the church and everything it stood for. Yet for these following words, the fight for our freedom went from a brush fire to a continent-wide blaze of glory:

Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet, and as England and America, with respect to each Other, reverses the common order of nature, it is evident they belong to different systems: England to Europe, America to itself.

I am not induced by motives of pride, party, or resentment to espouse the doctrine of separation and independence; I am clearly, positively, and conscientiously persuaded that it is the true interest of this continent to be so; that every thing short of that is mere patchwork, that it can afford no lasting felicity, that it is leaving the sword to our children, and shrinking back at a time, when, a little more, a little farther, would have rendered this continent the glory of the earth.

Thus Minds were fed, leaders were mentally reinvigorated, the revolution was then won.

If alive today, Thomas Paine would not be a electable to public office in any corner of this country, particularly as a member of the Republican party. This is so because he was not a conservative as we have now come to understand that concept(Christians first, militant pro-lifers, interventionists by expedience or practical benefit). Perhaps electable as a Democrat, his views on limited government would probably preclude him there too. Thomas Paine should be considered in all corners as one of the principal Founding Fathers equal to Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Henry and Franklin. The revelation that it was his mind, and not his mouth or sword, that was principally his contributing force is aparently anathema to the guardians of Founder-ship. Such is a lousy reason to exclude this great man from his rightful place. Indeed, I suspect that if one could poll those whom are considered as Founders asking who not among them ought to be, Mr. Paine would be highest upon their list…

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WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness–That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.

The Founders were declaring that we are all equal, and that we are defined by rights that we are born with, not given to us by government. Among those rights is the right to pursue happiness–to live our lives as we think best, as long as we respect the right of all other individuals to do the same. The Founders also declared that governments are created by people to secure their rights. Whatever powers government has are not “just” unless they come from us, the people.

Eleven years later, after the war for independence had been won, our Founders assembled once again to draw up a plan for governing the new nation. That plan would be ratified two years later as the Constitution of the United States of America.

To understand the true meaning of the Second Amendment, it is important to understand the men who wrote and ratified it, and the issues they faced in creating the Constitution. During the debate over the ratification of the Constitution, there was significant concern that a strong federal government would trample on the individual rights of citizens–as had happened under British rule. To protect the basic rights of Americans–rights which each person possesses and that are guaranteed, but not granted, by any government–the framers added the first ten amendments to the Constitution as a package. Those amendments have come to be known as the Bill of Rights. They represent the fundamental freedoms that are at the heart of our society, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion and the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

The History of Our Rights

The British people did not have a written constitution as we have in the United States. However, they did have a tradition of protecting individual rights from government. Those rights were set forth in a number of documents, including the Magna Carta and the English Declaration of Rights. The Founders who wrote the Bill of Rights drew many of their ideas from the traditions of English “common law,” which is the body of legal tradition and court decisions that acted as an unwritten constitution and as a balance to the power of English kings. The Founders believed in the basic rights of men as described in written legal documents and in unwritten legal traditions. One of these was the right of the common people to bear arms, which was specifically recognized in the English Declaration of Rights of 1689.

However, the Founders also recognized that without a blueprint for what powers government could exercise, the rights of the people would always be subject to being violated. The Constitution, and particularly the Bill of Rights, was created to specifically describe the powers of government and the rights of individuals government was not allowed to infringe.

1. Does the Second Amendment Describe An Individual Right?

Some people claim that there is no individual right to own firearms. However, anyone familiar with the principles upon which this country was founded will recognize this claim’s most glaring flaw: in America, rights–by definition–belong to individuals.

The Founding Fathers created the Bill of Rights to protect the rights of individuals. The freedoms of religion, speech, association, and the rest all refer to individual liberties. The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is no different. When the first Congress penned the Second Amendment in 1789, it took the wording, with some style changes, from a list of rights introduced by James Madison of Virginia. Congressman Madison had promised the Virginia ratifying convention that he would sponsor a Bill of Rights if the Constitution were ratified. The amendments he wrote would not change anything in the original Constitution. Madison repeatedly insisted that nothing in the original Constitution empowered the federal government to infringe on the rights of the people, specifically including the right of individuals to have guns.

In constructing the Bill of Rights, Madison followed the recommendations of the state ratifying conventions. Though they ratified the Constitution, several of those conventions had recommended adding provisions about specific rights. Five conventions recommended adding a right to arms; by comparison, only three conventions mentioned free speech.

Members of Congress had no doubt as to the amendment’s meaning. They and their contemporaries were firearm owners, hunters and in some cases gun collectors (George Washington and Thomas Jefferson exchanged letters about their collections). They had just finished winning their freedoms with gun in hand, and would, in their next session, pass legislation requiring most male citizens to buy and own at least one firearm and 30 rounds of ammunition.

The only reason there is a controversy about the Second Amendment is that on this subject many highly vocal and influential 21st Century Americans reject what seemed elementary common sense–and basic principle–to our Founding Fathers. The words of the founders make clear they believed the individual right to own firearms was very important:

Thomas Jefferson said, “No free man shall be debarred the use of arms.”

Patrick Henry said, “The great object is, that every man be armed.”

Richard Henry Lee wrote that, “to preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms.”

Thomas Paine noted, “[A]rms . . . discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property.”

Samuel Adams warned that: “The said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.”

The Constitution and Bill of Rights repeatedly refer to the “rights” of the people and to the “powers” of government. The Supreme Court has recognized that the phrase “the people,” which is used in numerous parts of the Constitution, including the Preamble, the Second, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments, refers to people as individuals. In each case, rights belonging to “the people” are without question the rights of individuals.

Dozens of essays have been written by the nation’s foremost authorities on the Constitution, supporting the traditional understanding of the right to arms as an individual right, protected by the Second Amendment.

2. Isn’t the “well regulated militia” the National Guard?

Gun control supporters insist that “the right of the people” really means the “right of the state” to maintain the “militia,” and that this “militia” is the National Guard. This is not only inconsistent with the statements of America’s Founders and the concept of individual rights, it also wrongly defines the term “militia.”

Centuries before the Second Amendment was drafted, European political writers used the term “well regulated militia” to refer to all the people, armed with their own firearms or swords, bows or spears, led by officers they chose.

America’s Founders defined the militia the same way. Richard Henry Lee wrote, “A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves . . . and include all men capable of bearing arms. . . .” Making the same point, Tench Coxe wrote that the militia “are in fact the effective part of the people at large.” George Mason asked, “[W]ho are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.”

The Militia Act of 1792, adopted the year after the Second Amendment was ratified, declared that the Militia of the United States (members of the militia who had to serve if called upon by the government) included all able-bodied adult males. The National Guard was not established until 1903. In 1920 it was designated one part of the “Militia of the United States.” The other part included other able-bodied adult men, plus some other men and women.

However, in 1990, the Supreme Court held that the federal government possesses complete power over the National Guard. The Guard is the third part of the United States Army, along with the regular Army and Army Reserve. The Framers’ independent “well regulated militia” remains as they intended, America’s armed citizenry.
3. Have the Courts or Congress ever studied the meaning of the Second Amendment?

The most thorough examination of the Second Amendment and related issues ever undertaken by a court is the 2001 decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in U.S. v. Emerson.

The court devoted dozens of pages of its decision to studying the Second Amendment’s history and text. It began by examining the Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Miller (1939), which individual rights opponents claim supports the notion of the Second Amendment protecting only a “collective right” of a state to maintain a militia. The Fifth Circuit disagreed. “We conclude that Miller does not support the collective rights or sophisticated collective rights approach to the Second Amendment.”

The court then turned to the history and text of the Second Amendment. “;There is no evidence in the text of the Second Amendment, or any other part of the Constitution, that the words ’the people’ have a different connotation within the Second Amendment than when employed elsewhere in the Constitution. In fact, the text of the Constitution, as a whole, strongly suggests that the words ’the people’ have precisely the same meaning within the Second Amendment as without. And as used throughout the Constitution, ’the people’ have ’rights’ and ’powers,’ but federal and state governments only have ’powers’ or ’authority’, never ’??rights.’”

The court concluded, “We have found no historical evidence that the Second Amendment was intended to convey militia power to the states, limit the federal government’s power to maintain a standing army, or applies only to members of a select militia while on active duty. All of the evidence indicates that the Second Amendment, like other parts of the Bill of Rights, applies to and protects individual Americans. We find that the history of the Second Amendment reinforces the plain meaning of its text, namely that it protects individual Americans in their right to keep and bear arms whether or not they are a member of a select militia or performing active military service or training.”

Four times in American history, Congress has enacted legislation declaring its clear understanding of the Second Amendment’s meaning. Congress has never given any support for the newly minted argument that the amendment fails to protect any right of the people, and instead ensures a “collective right” of states to maintain militias. In 1866, 1941, 1986, and 2005, Congress passed laws to reaffirm this guarantee of personal freedom and to adopt specific safeguards to enforce it.

The Freedmen’s Bureau Act of 1866 was enacted to protect the rights of freed slaves to keep and bear arms following the Civil War and at the outset of the chaotic Reconstruction period. The act declared protection for the “full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty, personal security, and . . . estate . . . including the constitutional right to bear arms. . . .”

The Property Requisition Act of 1941 was intended to reassure Americans that preparations for war would not include repressive or tyrannical policies against firearms owners. It was passed shortly before the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, which led the United States into World War II. The act declared that it would not “authorize the requisitioning or require the registration of any firearms possessed by any individual for his personal protection or sport,” or “to impair or infringe in any manner the right of any individual to keep and bear arms. . . .”

The two more recent laws sought to reverse excesses involving America’s legal system. In the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act of 1986, Congress reacted to overzealous enforcement policies under the federal firearms law: “The Congress finds that the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms under the second amendment to the United States Constitution; to security against illegal and unreasonable searches and seizures under the fourth amendment; against uncompensated taking of property, double jeopardy, and assurance of due process of law under the fifth amendment; and against unconstitutional exercise of authority under the ninth and tenth amendments; require additional legislation to correct existing firearms statutes and enforcement policies. . . .”

And in 2005, as a result of lawsuits aiming to destroy America’s firearms industry, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act to end this threat to the Second Amendment. The act begins with findings that go to the heart of the matter: “Congress finds the following: (1) The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. (2) The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the rights of individuals, including those who are not members of a militia or engaged in military service or training, to keep and bear arms.”

4. What are “gun control” laws?

“Gun control” is the popular name for laws that regulate, limit or prohibit the purchase and possession of firearms. “Gun control” laws are usually proposed on the grounds they will stop the criminal misuse of firearms, but they are almost never actually targeted at criminals. Supporters of “gun control” most commonly call for laws that restrict law-abiding people, the only ones who will obey them. Laws prohibiting the possession of a firearm are unlikely to stop a person willing to commit robbery, assault or murder. On the other hand, honest citizens who respect the law will submit to the gun control laws, even if the laws do not make them safer.

5. Are gun control laws new?

For centuries there have been efforts to control the possession of arms–whether crossbows, swords or guns–by government authority.

Efforts by English monarchs to limit or prohibit the possession of arms led to protests and revolts against royal power. The English Declaration of Rights of 1689 was the result of one such revolt, and it included the right of the individual to own and bear arms. The American Founders built on that tradition of individual rights when they included the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights.

6. Are firearms ever used to stop crime?

This is an important question that is at the center of much of the debate over firearms and gun laws. Incidents in which firearms are misused, whether accidentally or by criminals, “make the news.” Cases of people who have escaped harm because they had access to firearms are not so easy to record. Any ban on firearms is unlikely to prevent criminals from getting them. Even in places where firearms, particularly handguns, are banned–both here in the United States and internationally–criminals continue to get and misuse guns in crimes. The most direct impact of gun bans has been to disarm law-abiding people.

So, are guns used to stop crimes? Professor Gary Kleck of Florida State University has provided the best answer to this. An award-winning expert on crime, Prof. Kleck has conducted extensive survey research to measure firearms ownership and use in America. He found that firearms were used as often as 2.5 million times a year for protection–three to five times more often, he says, than they are used for criminal purposes. In the vast majority of these protective cases, the gun is not fired.

7. Does the Second Amendment apply to modern guns the same way it applied to flintlocks? Isn’t the Second Amendment dated and obsolete?

Just as the First Amendment applies to the modern printing press and the Internet, the Second Amendment applies to modern firearms. The most important aspect of the Second Amendment is the philosophy on which it is founded: that all free people have the right to defend themselves, their families, communities and nation. In 1789 it applied to the freedom to keep and bear arms just as it does today. The technological advances of the past two centuries do not make that principle obsolete, any more than computerized printing cancels the First Amendment.

8. Isn’t the Second Amendment just about protecting guns for hunting?

The Second Amendment is not about hunting at all. The Second Amendment is about protecting the right of a free people to defend that freedom and to protect their families and communities from threats. The Founders, who all considered themselves English citizens, had seen the British army disarm the public. They believed this was an improper use of government power. In writing the Constitution, they included the Second Amendment to prohibit the American government from doing what the British had done.

Hunting is an important American tradition and is the most effective wildlife management tool available. Firearms ownership is critical if hunting is to continue. So the fight to protect Second Amendment rights has the benefit of protecting this American sporting tradition.

9. Shouldn’t we at least try some gun control to see if it works?

We have. Over the past century, all types of gun control laws have been implemented in different parts of the United States. Everything from purchase restrictions to complete gun bans has been tried. These laws have not worked, and in some cases have had the opposite effect from what was intended.

Some big cities have strict gun laws. New York City has very strict gun laws, more strict than the rest of the state of New York. In spite of this, New York has always had significantly higher violent crime rates. Washington, D.C. and Chicago, Ill. have banned the ownership of handguns, and both these cities have much higher violent crime rates than the surrounding areas.

States such as Illinois and New York have gun owner licensing. Other states, such as Hawaii, have gun registration. However, none of these laws led to reductions in violent crime rates. And that is the real test of gun control laws. Do crime rates fall after gun laws are passed? The clear answer is no. Gun control has been tested, and it has failed the test.

10. If there are more guns, won’t we have more crime?

Many areas with high percentages of gun owners are some of the most crime free areas in the nation. The simple presence of a gun, or many guns, does not lead to crime. Most of the states with higher per capita legal gun ownership have the lowest rates of violent crime, while states with lower per capita gun ownership have much higher violent crime rates. The real answer to reducing crime is not passing gun laws, but solving other problems that really do lead to high crime rates. Gun control diverts attention from the roots of the crime problem.

11. Don’t we need gun control to stop firearm accidents?

The truth is that in the past seventy years, while the U.S. population has more than doubled and the number of firearms owned by Americans has gone up five times, fatal firearm accidents have been cut by 76%. The most important factor in reducing firearms accidents is proper education on the safe handling and storage of firearms. NRA, the leading pro-gun ownership rights group in the nation, has spent over a century teaching firearm safety.

Firearms accidents can always be reduced further, but their numbers are far below many other common mishaps including drownings, falls and poisonings. Gun accidents account for only 0.7% of accidental deaths.

12. Wouldn’t we be safer if we banned guns?

To some people, banning guns sounds like a perfect way to make the world safer. However, proponents of gun bans ignore two important facts. Criminals ignore gun bans, and law-abiding people will be even more at risk with no effective means of self-defense.

The British experience with gun bans is a perfect example. Over the past 20 years, Great Britain has banned handguns and many long guns. During that same period violent crime has increased dramatically. One significant area where crime has risen sharply in England is home burglaries where the occupants are present. Since they know the residents will not be armed, thieves more openly enter even occupied homes, often during daylight hours. This has resulted in more violence against victims who try to defend their homes.

In general, the crime rates of Canada, Britain, and Australia, all of which have implemented strict gun control laws, have risen significantly after the passage of these laws. At the same time, the U.S. has seen a significant drop in violent crime rates.

The evidence shows that firearm ownership, including handguns, does not lead to increased crime rates, and gun bans do not deter criminals from committing violent crimes. In fact, ownership of firearms deters crime.

13. Shouldn’t we at least ban handguns?

The important truth is: criminals do not want to attack armed citizens. The only real impact of a handgun ban is to insure that law-abiding citizens are disarmed, leaving them more at the mercy of illegally armed criminals. Cities such as Washington D.C. and Chicago have banned handguns, and violent crime has not been eliminated, or even reduced.

14. Who can buy a firearm? Can just anyone own a gun?

Federal law says that certain people cannot buy or possess any firearm. This includes convicted felons, fugitives from the law and people found mentally incompetent by a court. A licensed dealer may not sell handguns to people under the age of 21 or long guns to people under the age of 18.

In addition, under federal law, a person under age 18 may not possess a handgun or handgun ammunition, and it is illegal for a person to provide a handgun or handgun ammunition to a person under age 18, except for target shooting, hunting, or certain other exempted purposes. Additional restrictions are also imposed by individual states and localities.

15. Doesn’t the public have a right to know who owns a gun?

Gun registration and owner licensing don’t help police solve crime. Criminals do not register their guns or get licenses. On the other hand, gun registration lists have been used to confiscate citizens’ firearms in cities like New York and in states such as California.

16. We license drivers, shouldn’t we license gun owners?

Driving a car is not a constitutional right. People drive on the public roads as a privilege provided by the community. The community sets standards for drivers that everyone has to meet to make the roads safe. Firearm ownership is a constitutional right, and that means government has very limited power to restrict it. Gun owner licensing has little, if any, real value in preventing crime, but has proven time and again to set the stage for infringement on the right to own a firearm.

American gun owners know their concerns about licensing are not unfounded, because they know the history of gun control in Great Britain. After passage of the Firearms Act of 1920, Britons suddenly could possess pistols and rifles only if they proved they had “good reason” for receiving a police permit. Then, in 1936, the British police began regulating how people stored their guns.

As the public grew accustomed to gun licensing, the licensing requirements got stricter. The British gun owners got used to higher and higher levels of control. The result was a total ban on the possession of handguns and many types of rifle and shotguns. When the gun bans became law, no one remembered that the 1920 gun bill was only supposed “to prevent criminals and persons of that description from being able to have revolvers and to use them.”

17. What should we do about gun shows where people don’t have to obey all the regular gun laws?

The “gun show loophole” is a myth created by anti-gun activists to advance their political agenda. There is no loophole. All gun sales or transfers are subject to state and federal laws. All licensed firearm dealers must complete the process provided for by state and federal law–a process that includes completion of forms and a background check on the buyer–before a gun can be sold. This is true no matter where the sale takes place, at a gun store or at a gun show.

Federal law also regulates sales of firearms between private individuals. It is a serious crime to sell a firearm to someone who is not a resident of the same state as the seller.

18. Don’t we need to have mandatory safety training to buy a gun?

The problem with mandatory gun safety training is that it can so easily be used to interfere with someone’s choice to own a firearm. “Safety” training can be used improperly to infringe on the right to keep and bear arms. Anti-gun politicians and government officials can use such laws to require unreasonable levels of training. Making people attend 30, 40 or more hours of “safety” training before they can buy a gun will prevent many people from owning a firearm. The costs of these classes also have been a deterrent, particularly to lower income people.

19. Why does anyone need an “assault weapon”?

This question is often used to justify laws restricting firearms ownership. So-called “assault weapons” are just one example. Why does anyone need a handgun? Why does anyone need a semi-auto shotgun? The real question we ask is, “Why does government need to restrict this right for law-abiding citizens?” In a free society the government has to prove it needs to restrict the basic rights of the people. The government that can restrict a right based on “need” can restrict any right. That is not a free society.

Banning guns because some criminals use them tells all honest citizens that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct but on the behavior of the lawless. It tells the law-abiding that they have only such rights and liberties as criminals will allow.

20. Isn’t it clear that America needs a national gun policy?

It has one: the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, a massive set of restrictions on who may sell, buy and own firearms, how sales may occur, and what kinds of firearms may be sold. There are severe penalties for violations of these laws, but they have to be enforced. And, of course, each state and the District of Columbia and many cities and towns have laws governing the purchase, possession, and use of firearms. All told, there are tens of thousands of federal, state and local gun laws on the books.

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